PACELC extends CAP: "If Partition, choose Availability or Consistency; Else, choose Latency or Consistency."
Even without network partitions, you trade latency for consistency. Synchronous replication (strong consistency) adds latency. Async replication (eventual consistency) is faster. DynamoDB: PA/EL (available during partition, low latency otherwise). Spanner: PC/EC (consistent always, accepts latency cost).